Fighting with Popski's Private Army

Park Yunnie

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781848326163
• eBook ISBN: 9781783031726
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

This WWII memoir gives the inside story of Britain's legendary demolition squadron and their daring escapades in Italy and Norther Africa.

During the Second World War, a Russian-born emigre named Vladimir Peniakoff emerged as a decorated officer of the British Special Forces in Cairo. Code-named Popski, he started the No. 1 Demolition Squadron—known as Popski's Private Army—charged with thwarting Field-Marshal Rommel's fuel supply in Northern Africa. This is the story of Popski's famous fighting unit as told by his second-in-command, Captain Bob (Park) Yunnie.
 

As Britain's Eighth Army advanced toward Tripoli, PPA set out in jeeps across the desert to mount raids behind the Mareth Line in Southern Tunisia. In his lively and intimate account, Yunnie describes the ensuing action at Gafsa and Kasserine, and vividly depicts the sorties which took the men straight across the German Line of Command.
As Tunis fell to the Allies on May, 7th, 1943, PPA began raid operations for the Italian Campaign. Dropped into Central Italy by RAF gliders, they set about blowing up strategic targets while waiting for the Allied landings. Yunnie takes command of his own patrol, and through a series of daring missions, colorful characters flit in and out of the front-line action.

1

A line of military vehicles wound its way across the Libyan Desert, bound for the Oasis of Kufra. Popski sat at the wheel of the leading jeep, his eyes on the moving shadow of the sun-compass clamped to the instrument panel in front. In the seat beside him, Bell, his gunner-driver, sat with pencil and notepad, logging their route. Ahead of them, dancing in the heat haze, fantastic shapes of sand and rock marked the ragged escarpment of the Gilf Kebir.

Popski glanced at the speedometer and shook his head.

‘Give me the map board, Bell.’

Bell lifted the map board from his knees and apprehensively handed it to Popski. Navigation wasn’t Bell’s strong point; he felt ill at ease.

Popski looked at the grubby log on the map board and from the grubby log to Bell.

‘Do you know what you’re doing, Bell?’

Driver Bell went red in the face.

‘N-not really, sir,’ he stammered.

‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ Popski exploded. ‘You’re here to learn. If you don’t understand a thing, ask.’

Bell looked sheepish.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said meekly.

Popski held up a sunburned hand and the line of vehicles halted. He wheeled his jeep and drove to the end of the column, braking level with the last jeep. I looked at him expectantly.

‘Yes, Popski?’

‘We’re wrong somewhere, Bob. According to the speedometer reading we should be in the gap by now. There’s no sign of it. Either the bearing’s wrong or I’ve made a mistake somewhere. Stay here till I make a reconnaissance.’

‘O.K., Popski.’

Popski revved away in a rising cloud of dust. I called to Sergeant Waterson in the next jeep.

‘Brew up, Sarge. We’re waiting.’

Sergeant Waterson cocked a blue eye in the direction of the nearest 3-tonner and swung from his jeep.

‘Shay, Mohammed,’ he bawled to the Senussi guide perched on top of the load.

Mohammed Mustapha grinned, showing perfect white teeth.

‘Aywah,’ he answered, and slid off the truck.

Driver Davies jumped down and from the back of the 3-tonner lifted a perforated petrol tin, which he scooped half full with sand, poured petrol over it and threw in a lighted match. The contents took fire with a swoosh and Davies shielded his face from the flame.

Driver Weldon jumped from the driving seat of the other 3-tonner, poured water into a blackened tea can and stuck it on top of the fire; Sergeant Waterson reached over the tailboard and drew out a tin of condensed milk. ‘Catch!’ he shouted to the group by the fire and tossed it through the air. Weldon cupped his hands and caught it neatly, like a cricketer catching a ball.

When the water boiled, Sergeant Waterson threw in a handful of tea, stirred the contents with a stick, lifted the can off the fire and tapped it with the stick to make the tea-leaves sink to the bottom; the tinny sound echoed strangely in the still desert air. Driver Weldon jabbed two holes in the top of the condensed milk tin with the spike of his jackknife and poured a thick spout of milk into the tea.

‘Come and get it,’ Waterson yelled.

We all grabbed our enamel mugs and gathered round the tea can.

‘What’s the form, sir?’ Waterson asked. ‘Bearing’s wrong. We’re too far north,’ I replied between gulps of tea. ‘Popski’s gone to look for tracks.’

We stood in a group in the blistering sun, drinking tea. The desert was all about us, a silent, heat-filled waste of sand shimmering under a cloudless sky. Nothing moved but the dancing mirage; apart from ourselves there wasn’t a living thing for hundreds of empty miles. We were five days out from Cairo, halted on a wrong bearing, 400 miles from Kufra; lost.

In the absence of its commander, I surveyed Popski’s Private Army. It wasn’t much to look at – three small jeeps and two big 3-tonners, one officer (myself), a dozen men, three Senussi Arabs; a hastily recruited, raw, untrained and untried unit. Popski only had any real desert experience. The rest of us were just tyros; keenness, willingness to learn, our only assets.

I looked at the low-slung, racy jeeps with their welded array of water and petrol can brackets, their twin-mounted Vickers machine-guns, the grooved yellow sand channels clamped to the sides. I looked at the overloaded 3-ton Chevrolet trucks with their sawn-off driving cabins and the single machine-gun mounted in front. I looked at the men, at Sergeant Waterson from the King’s Dragoon Guards with his piercing blue eye staring from under the brim of the peaked New Zealander’s hat shading his face from the sun; at Corporal Locke with the piratical black patch over one eye; at Driver Davies with the baggy shorts a size too big for his waist; at Driver Weldon with the scrubby beginnings of a beard on his chin; at little Jock Welsh, the fitter from R.E.M.E.; at Petrie, our navigator, a thoughtful young man who lived with the stars; at Bill Wilson, my driver, desperately keen to make good; at Mohammed Mustapha, at Abdel Salem Othman, at Yunes Yusef Abdallah, our three Senussi guides crouched over a fire some distance apart, brewing their sweet Arab tea. A motley crew.

‘Why did you join?’ I asked Driver Davies, who was helping himself to more tea.

‘Browned-off with base, sir. I wanted something to do.’

‘And you, Jock?’ I asked Fitter Welsh.

‘Same mucking reason, sir. Browned-off with base.’

A black speck appeared on the horizon. It grew bigger and bigger …

‘Popski,’ somebody said.

I shaded my eyes from the glare and watched Popski’s jeep come sailing through the mirage; his wheels appeared to revolve without touching the sand.

When he drew up beside me I handed him a mug of hot tea.

He pushed the motoring goggles away from his eyes.

‘I’ve found the track. We’re miles out.’

‘I knew the bearing was wrong. That signal was corrupt.’

Popski gulped a mouthful of tea.

‘It’s that clot Waddington’s fault. He promised me the wireless in Cairo. It’s waiting for us in Kufra. We shouldn’t have left without one.’

‘Too late to worry about it now,’ I said philosophically.

Popski gulped the last of his tea and handed me the mug.

‘Thanks, Bob. That was good. Follow me.’

Popski drove to the head of the column. Sergeant Waterson bawled:

‘All aboard!’

Driver Davies poured the tea-leaves into a russet heap on the sand and hung the empty tea can on its hook under the tailboard of his 3-tonner; Driver Weldon emptied the perforated fire can and pitched it in the back; the three Senussi ran to the trucks, clutching their teapot and glasses, trailing their jerds in the sand.

Self-starters rasped, engines revved, and the column moved on….

Following the sand-blown wheel tracks of a Long Range Desert Group patrol we twisted and turned through the maze of basalt teeth that filled the gap between the towering black cliffs of the silent Gilf Kebir. Hades itself could be no more terrifying than this dead valley of petrified rock, bleached camel bones, sifting sand, heat, mirage and diabolical stillness; the note of our exhausts death-rattled against the lifeless mushroom rocks and our voices, echoing hollowly in the riven gullies, cackled like the souk of the damned. ‘Fly, fly from this forgotten vale,’ they seemed to cry, ‘the living have no place here, this is a haunt of the dead.’

The sand was soft. Popski, an experienced desert driver, changed into lowest booster gear and chugged jerkily through it. Petrie, behind him, stuck and had to use sand channels. Weldon, following close behind in his overloaded 3-tonner, felt his rear wheels sink in. He changed down, accelerated madly and sank his truck to the tailboard. He got down and stood looking at the buried wheels, scratching his head.

‘How the mucking hell did I do that?’

Davies, churning along behind him, bogged down also, but not quite so deeply; seeing Weldon dig in, he learned from his mistake, and stopped in time. Waterson and I drove alongside in our lighter jeeps; we felt our rear wheels sink in as soon as we applied the brakes.

Waterson regarded Weldon’s bellied 3-tonner with a jaundiced eye.

‘We’ll have to unload that bastard,’ he groaned.

Popski, chugging on ahead like a motor boat in a choppy sea, looked back to see how we fared, saw the mess we were in, wheeled about and came back. He gear-braked his jeep to a stop on a patch of hard sand without sinking the wheels. I marvelled and walked across to him, feeling the burning heat of the sand through my desert boots.

‘We’ll have to unload Weldon’s 3-tonner, Popski.’

He nodded and lit a cigarette; the operation would take time.

We jumped from our vehicles and set about unloading Weldon’s truck. The temperature was 100°F and there wasn’t any shade.

Off came the heavy petrol and water cans, the boxes of hand-grenades, the road mines, the rolls of plastic 808 high explosive, the pans of Vickers ammunition, the boxes of compo rations….

Weldon and Davies took spades and dug the sand from the buried wheels.

‘Deeper,’ said Waterson, ‘deeper yet… now put in your sand channels.’

They put the perforated, grooved steel channels under the rear wheels.

‘Right, Weldon,’ said Waterson, ‘lowest gear and let in your clutch gently.’

Weldon climbed to the driver’s seat, started his engine, grated into first gear and let in the clutch….

The rear wheels spun, throwing out sand, gripped on the channels and the truck moved forward a few inches. We all rushed behind and shoved.

‘Keep going, keep going,’ we yelled.

The 3-tonner jerked forward a few feet, rode over the sand channels and sank in again.

‘Stop!’ we yelled frantically. ‘Stop!’

Weldon declutched. We picked up the sand channels, ran forward and pushed them under the wheels.

‘Take ‘er away.’

Weldon revved and his truck moved forward again, rode over the channels and kept moving.

‘Keep going,’ we encouraged him, ‘keep going, keep going,’ and picked up the sand channels and ran alongside, throwing them under the moving wheels….

Popski watched our antics from the comfort of his crawling jeep; he’d done the same thing himself, hundreds of times; now it was our turn to learn.

Three hundred yards further on Weldon drove onto a patch of hard sand and drew up his truck; we muttered ‘Thank God’, wiped our dripping brows and walked back to ferry the load….

‘What a bloody life,’ groaned Fitter Welsh, staggering through the churned-up sand with a box of grenades on his shoulder.

‘Shouldn’ta joined, chum,’ jeered Davies, easing the compo box on his back.

‘Get your knees browned,’ laughed Corporal Locke, coming back for another load.

‘Stop ticking, Welsh,’ admonished Sergeant Waterson, striding past with his arms full of high explosive.

‘Watch ye dinna blaw up, Sarge,’ tittered Bill Wilson.

‘I’ll blaw you up, Wilson. Get a jerk on.’

When Weldon’s load was ferried and re-stowed on his 3-tonner we went back and helped Davies through the soft patch; then we formed up and drove on again….

The fantastically shaped basalt pillars shrunk in size, the sand became harder and we left the silent, eerie Gilf behind; the soaring black cliffs became a dark line against the sky and gradually disappeared. The empty desert stretched in front of us, a vast solitude of undulating, yellow-ochre sand in which nothing moved but the dancing, shimmering heat waves. Sand, sand, sand; not a bush, nor a blade of grass, no living thing; no water; not even a rock nor a stone, no landmark of any kind; nothing but sand, hot, burning sand, with the khamseen, the searing desert wind, blowing in our faces, cracking our lips, drying our throats, filling eyes and ears and nostrils with a fine, sandy dust….

Day after day we rode over the blistering surface of the great inner desert, navigating its uncharted wastes like a convoy of ships at sea, steering our course by the shadow of the sun on a needle, checking our position at night by the stars. Popski led, followed by Petrie, logging his route; then Weldon’s lumbering 3-tonner, followed by Davies in his; Waterson followed Davies in his jeep, with Yunes beside him; Bill Wilson and I brought up the rear.

One day was very like another. It began at crack of dawn with Waterson’s parade-ground voice bellowing ‘Wakey, wakeeey’ as he went from truck to truck rousing the sleeping crews…. We cursed him inaudibly, wriggled out of our warm sleeping-bags, pulled on sweaters against the morning chill – for the desert is cold at night – and physical-jerked the sleep from our eyes…. The cooks for the day made breakfast – burgoo porridge, two rashers of bacon, biscuits and jam, two or three cups of sweet tea…. Self-starters rasping … engines revving and left running to warm up, with the exhaust note burbling clearly in the crisp desert air…. Then Popski would beckon and we would take up our map-boards and gather round him for details of the day’s route … stow sleeping-bags … and wait for the sun to cast a shadow on the sun-compass….

We drove until noon and halted for a rest. We had to, because for an hour the sun was directly overhead and cast no shadow, so that we couldn’t navigate…. We gathered round the tailboard of Davies’ 3-tonner and Waterson rationed out the midday meal – biscuits and cheese, pickles, tinned fruit, lime juice powder and water. When it was consumed we thrust our heads under the trucks for the only shade there was and dozed a while, feeling the sun burning our trunks and legs…. At one o’clock we drove on again, guided by the shadow cast by the westering sun … and pulled into leaguer an hour before dusk … vehicle maintenance first – fill up with petrol from Weldon’s 3-tonner, lightening his overload; check water and oil levels, tyre pressures, chassis nuts and bolts; clean guns … then rum issue – a mouthful of water, rum and lime juice powder, which miraculously removed bodily fatigue … followed by the evening meal – bully-beef stew … and the enchanting hour of dusk when the rapidly falling sun, dropping over the desert’s rim in a last flurry of blazing gold, filled the dunes with mystic light and transformed the glaring waste into a haunting fairyland of marching rainbow hues, phalanxes of burnished gold, brave companies of purple and mauve, charging squadrons of violet … and the wind, the desert sculptor, blowing spume from the crests of the dunes in fluttering pennants of indigo … twinkling stars strewn richly in the velvet cupola of nig...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• An Appreciation - of Captain Bob Yunnie of ‘B’ Patrol, P.P.A.
• Author’s Note
• Prologue
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• Epilogue - The Life of Robert Park Yunnie After the War